soul, and that certain people of the praying sort already thought that he was “lost,” the words were fastened in his flesh like rankling and envenomed barbs. And instantly, the moment that he heard this story and had cursed it, he thought that it was true. Now, his mind could no longer remember the time just a moment before when Robert’s words had seemed only an idle and malicious fabrication, probably designed to goad him, or, even if true, of no great importance.
But now, as if the idle gossip of the other youth had really pronounced some fatal and inexorable judgment against his whole life, the boy’s spirit was set against “them” blindly, as against a nameless and hostile antagonist. Plunged suddenly into a dark weather of fatality and grim resolution, something in him was saying grimly and desperately:
“All right, then. If that’s the way they feel about me, I’ll show them.” And seeing the lonely earth outside that went stroking past the windows of the train, he suddenly felt the dark and brooding joy of desperation and escape, and thought again: “Thank God, I’ve got away at last. Now there’s a new land, a new life, new people like myself who will see and know me as I am and value me—and, by God, I’ll show them! I’ll show them, all right.”
And at just this moment of his gloomy thoughts, he muttered sombrely, aloud, with sullen face:
“All right! To hell with them! I’ll show them!”
—And was instantly aware that Robert was looking at him, laughing his little, malicious, hoarse, falsetto laugh, and that the other youth, who was a fair-haired, red-cheeked and pleasant-featured boy named Creasman, obviously somewhat inflamed by drink and by his social triumphs of the evening, was now, with an eager excessiveness of good-fellowship, slapping him on the back and saying boisterously:
“Don’t let him kid you, Gene! To hell with them! What do you care what they say, anyway?”
With these words, he produced from his pocket a flask of the raw, colourless, savagely instant corn whisky, of which both of them apparently had been partaking pretty freely, and tendering it to the boy, said:
“Here, take a drink!”
The boy took the flask, pulled out the cork, and putting the bottle to his lips, instantly gulped down two or three powerful swallows of the fiery stuff. For a moment, he stood there blind and choking, instantly robbed of breath, his throat muscles swelling, working, swallowing convulsively in
